


Love, Love, Love

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic Violence, M/M, Multi, Slow Build, VOLUNTARILY MUTE CASTIEL, mentions of alcoholic abuse, public embarrassment due to older brothers, punk!Cas, trigger: cutting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:32:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off the Of Monsters and Men song, 'Love Love Love', Castiel Novak is the youngest of eight. After a traumatic time in France, he becomes voluntarily mute. His mother kicked out of his large house in rural, Nice, France, he and his older brother, Gabriel, and sister, Anna, travel away from their home. Heading towards nowhere, they find themselves in a small city in Italy, where Castiel meets his first boyfriend, Inias, who he dates for six months. </p>
<p>After moving to America, Castiel quickly befriends Meg Masters, who becomes his best friend. Balthazar, from France who he easily communicates with and becomes close too, and Ezekiel, who goes by Zeke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chapter one

Dear Whomever Reads This First:

I used to talk. I promise. I talked until I was fourteen, truth be told. I haven’t breathed a word for three years, haven’t smiled for two and a half. When I was fourteen, when I stopped talking, my brother, Raphael, died in a car accident. It was my birthday and I was with him when it happened. I woke up three days later, and refused to talk after what I had been through. To compensate, my older sister, Anna, my brother, Lucifer, and my mother, Victoire, learned sign language.

Then I saw, one year and three days later I watched my father hit my mother. I stopped smiling at that point. My family tried everything to get me to talk, but I immersed myself in swimming and fencing after that had happened.

At the age of sixteen, my father kicked Maman out of our large house in rural Nice, France. We spent a year on the road, Gabriel, Anna, Maman, and myself. Lucifer was in Greece, Michael moved out with Zachariah. My cousin, Naomi, stayed with Father.

On the road I met a boy named Inias, who worked at a local coffee shop in a town that I stayed in for a long period of time in. We soon dated, after I found a note in my book that I had left on the table as I went to the toilet. When I had come back I found it in my book and sat down and read it.

_Noticed you came by here a lot and I couldn’t help but admire. I also noticed you never talked and I think you’re insanely attractive. Text me?_

_986-1857_

_-Inias x_

So of course I had turned red, reading it over. I wasn’t much, maybe yellow jeans and a studded leather jacket, band shirts and the same winged high tops every day. I was gauges and piercings, recently highlighted blue hair.

So when I got to the motel room I was sharing with Gabriel, he saw the note and grinned, racing into Maman and Anna’s room, yelling ‘Cassie’s gonna get laid!’

I never saw the note again.

So the next day as I went into the coffee shop with my newest book, I went up and smiled at Inias, handing him a slip of paper that read:

_My brother took the note. Dinner?_

_(and ps. surprise me with the drink.)_

And I swear to whoever’s up there, his entire face glowed. So we went out for about six months, breaking up simply because it was time for me to move again. This is when we moved to America.

I still kept up with Inias, through email. I did, however, never see him again.

And this is the story of the man who got me to smile, who got me to talk, who got me to become human again.

I hope to see you in another life,

-Castiel Novak

 

\--

 

The road was dry, the trees were dry, everything was dry, especially Castiel’s chapped lips. He licked his lips, his already long fingers playing with a recently stretched gauge- a fourteenth birthday present.

“If you keep doing that, you’ll ruin them,” Raphael said from the driver’s seat of the car, eyes focused on the road ahead of him.

Cas groaned and sat back in his seat, readjusting the seatbelt. The classical music filled the silence between them, making it more bearable, “You know, you weren’t even looking at me.”

His older brother let out a sharp breath through his nose as the corners of his mouth turned up in somewhat of a smile, accented by a glint in his eye, “Can’t tell you all of my secrets yet, little brother.”

Castiel was used to those kinds of answers. He looked out the window, listening to the music as he watched the road, lit up by France’s September sun.

“Happy birthday, Castiel,” Raphael said softly, “And many more.”

Looking over at his older brother strangely, Castiel tipped his head to the right, “Thank you,” He said, “I actually had a nice time.”

Raphael looked over at Castiel, “If I told you I was being paid to be pleasant?”

“You should get a raise,” Castiel said, giving him a smile.

Raphael chuckled lightly as he took a turn, heading down the road that would bring them home in roughly fifteen minutes, and maybe one and a half commercial breaks on the radio station.

Silence passed through them, causing Castiel to play with his fingers in attempt to find something to fill it. The oncoming car fixed that.

It was a blur of white sun, blood-stained glass, scratched forearms and screams. A seatbelt burn on Castiel’s neck that saved his life, then blackness.

Blackness led to white light that burned against his eyelids, a soft touch of lotioned hands and the smell of antibacterial hand sanitizer. The steady flips of pages in a novel, then went unsteady like the heart rate monitor next to him.

He couldn’t move his arm. Where the seatbelt had cut across burned hurt like no rug burn he’d ever gotten before.

“Castiel?” A French voice came from somewhere. He didn’t open his eyes, but matched the voice to his mothers. Maman.

The book dropped, page not marked as he felt calloused hands cupping his face. Calloused hands that smelt like toasted coconut cookies, charcoal, faintly wine, and paint.

Definitely Maman.

Castiel opened his eyes in showing that he was here, and alive (although the steady heart beats could’ve shown the same thing).

His name was repeated again, this time by Anna, who was holding his hand as she sat on the bed. The long sleeves of the green sweatshirt- his green sweatshirt- pooled around her skinny and bracelet-covered wrists.

He looked back from her to Maman, not speaking.

“Castiel? Please say something,” She begged in French.

He sat up, looking around the hospital room, then down at his arm that was in a sling. He looked up at his mother and elder sister, “Where’s Raphael?” He croaked out, his voice scratchy like his arms and face.

His mother collapsed in tears at the words of her dead son.

 


	2. chapter two

“Alright, Cassie, what do you want?” Gabriel asked, looking over at his brother. The pastry shoppe was lit dimly, lit warmly. Castiel examined the pastries before he pointed to his favourite. A type of viennoiserie; pain au chocolat. Gabriel nodded and recited the order to the clerk, who gathered the breads and pastries, placing them in boxes and bags. Pulling out cash, Gabriel thanked the clerk and paid, Castiel helping to carry everything out to the car.

Silence filled the car as Gabriel started it up. Castiel leaned forwards to turn off the radio as Gabriel had turned it on.

Arguments were void that day on the way home.

Castiel moved his hands in a flutter of symbols, but Gabriel cut him off.

“I don’t want to learn it.”

Castiel dropped his hands, looking back out the window.

“I don’t want to learn it because I want to hear your annoying-ass little brother voice, again, okay?”

Castiel looked down.

“Cassie, listen. I think that you just need to find someone.”

Castiel turned Gabriel’s head to look back at the road.

The older, yet shorter, brother didn’t say anything more as they drove home.

 

Silence carried when they got home.

The nanny, a short and stout woman with pale skin, came to the door and took some of the pastries and bread, and led Castiel into the kitchen with them. Gabriel accompanied his brothers upstairs.

Castiel helped put away the bread as the previously mentioned nanny, Aadi, set out the pastries on plates, Castiel writing his siblings names on paper. The paper was folded and placed next to the respectable pastry.

_Zachariah, Michael, Lucifer, Naomi, Gabriel, Anna, Castiel._

He capped the marker then folded the papers over. Aadi took them out and set them down on the dining room table. Castiel took his as she called them all down. The youngest brother slipped up into his room, setting his pastry down on a nightstand before laying down on his made bed, staring at the ceiling.

Castiel used to be proud of his room.

It used to have clean, deep blue walls that reminded him of the sea. White trim and a matching ceiling. The bed was dark mahogany and the duvet and sheets were white to match the curtains and accent the walls. Flooring was wooden like the bed.

Now his room walls were covered in prints of artwork he liked, and art that he had done. It hung on canvas and poster, paper and newsprint. Anything he could get his hands on. What was left of the dark walls had holes from punches or glass had been thrown to have it shard.

He kept the shards in a drawer that he kept locked.

 

Castiel, now fifteen, ran a hand over his ever-growing scruff. He wished for the millionth time it didn’t grow so fast, that it hadn’t grown, and he knew he’d have a shadow present always.

He ran a hand and pulled a bit at his hair. He sat up again and shrugged his leather jacket off, revealing a saddening collection of tally marks and words on his arms that were slowly scarring over. Biting his lip, he pulled his shirt over his head, letting the red tank top discard itself on the floor of his room as he stood and moved to a wall. The picture stared back at him.

The man- or woman- in orange cowered from a larger green man with long, white fingernails and black scraggly hair. There was broken walls and a couple of hills. The trees tangled like kudzu and the leaves were circles of purples and whites, much like grapes.

If you had asked Castiel what he liked so much about the painting, he would shrug and not talk to you. He had a lot to say on the piece, but he could never bring himself to.

Not since Raphael had died in that car accident.

He made his way back to the bed with his sketchbook. The music went up, blocking out anything else that dared to interfere as he stared at the pictures, trying to find something to draw, something new, something human.

Something to forget about the pain.

Normally it’s Anna. Anna with her fiery red hair and sundresses, collarbones and strapless tops.

The redhead was reluctant to come to his mind.

Pencil lead left marks in the paper from tapping as he thought.

 

 


	3. chapter three

All he wanted was water. Castiel had slipped downstairs and was getting a glass. That’s when he heard it. From the other side of the door, he heard his mother and father arguing. The French accents stood out against each other. His mother’s rough Parisian accent clashing with his father’s smooth upper class one.

He pushed the door open a crack, and saw his mother with tears streaming down her face, push her husband away. And Castiel blinked and ran away upstairs with his own tears in his eyes as his father slapped his mother across the face.

The water was forgotten, glass left on the counter.

Another punch was added to the wall, along with another shattering of a glass.

With shaking hands, Castiel reached forwards and picked up a glass shard with shaking fingers.

Red was beautiful.

 

\--

 

The next day he wore sleeves. The next day he couldn’t bring himself to smile when Aadi let him eat the batter.

 

\--

 

A duffel greeted him when he awoke when he was sixteen and fourty-five days.

Opening the bag, there was a letter inside with the simple words, ‘Pack everything.’

Castiel didn’t understand but threw the covers off of him and went about getting dressed. He buttoned the white button down all the way up, the small Peter Pan collar something new. He did up his jeans and slid into a sweater. Fixing his sleeves, he went about packing.

The hangers were left hanging up in his closet as he rolled his clothes up to fit in his duffel. He was able to fit most of his clothes, having to carry his jacket. He left behind his trench coat- his security blanket.

It was replaced by a jacket of the same colouring, yet went down to his hips and was an athletic jacket. He put that one on, his leather jacket on the duffel as he went to pack his toiletries. His gauges went in after his toothbrush and toothpaste, followed by his comb and hair product. He left the bar soap, packing his shampoo and the boxes of hair dye. He shoved them into the bag next to his electric shaver.

A teary eyed Aadi waited for him in the foyer, helping him with his jackets to the garage, where Gabriel was driving one car, and his mother the other. He looked over at Aadi, confused.

“I figured you’d want to be with your mother,” She said softly.

He nodded, placing his bags in the back trunk to his mother’s car, placing his bag of school work and sketchbooks, and various pencil pouches in the back seat.

I’ll miss you, Castiel signed as he hugged Aadi.

“Don’t waste those tears on me,” She said, kissing his cheek, “Take care of your mother.”

Castiel nodded and got in the car, silently, as they drove off and away from the house that he had known as home.


	4. chapter

They drove.

Castiel lost count of how long they drove for, he dozed off a couple times, his mother’s weary eyes focused on the road in front.

He didn’t know what had happened. What had caused his father to force his mother out.

He assumed it was his father. What other explanation was there?

The thoughts flowed through his brain. Why had his mother been forced to leave, what had caused her to leave? Was it his father? Was it his family in general?

“Castiel? Are you okay?” His mother asked, taking his hand in hers, squeezing it slightly.

Cas looked over, shaking his head as she turned back to the road. She took a turn down a road, heading towards what Castiel hoped was a motel of some sort- his back ached from nodding off in the seat.

Why would he be okay?

Victoire released his hand, putting her own, once neatly manicured nails back on the steering wheel.

He noticed that her hands were no longer short, yet neatly manicured, painted a nice, soft, colour. The paint was chipped to the middle, her nails were longer- she hadn’t been painting or sketching. The thought made Castiel’s stomach sink, his nearly healed arms itch with a sick kind of want.

He pulled his sleeves down more.

There was a minute of debating as Victoire examined the outside of the hotel, before continuing to drive, stopping at a motel. She parked the car, Gabriel parking alongside them, as she looked over to face her son.

“Go ahead and get your clothes for tomorrow, pajamas for tonight,” She said, kissing his forehead, “I love you.”

Cas’s brows furrowed at the statement, but then relaxed into the lips against his forehead. His mother pulled away, unlocking the car as Castiel tapped at her arm, causing her to look over as Castiel’s hands worked in a flurry of motions.

Maman, what happened?

A sigh pulled itself from her chest, “I’ll tell you later.”

Victoire got out of the car, popping open the trunk and moving to get her clothes, talking to Gabriel as she did so.

Castiel sighed after his mother left, collecting himself before heading over to the trunk, finding his clothes for tomorrow, along with some pjyamas.

The next two weeks of nights went like that, until they arrived in Pescara, Italy.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Sketchbook in a messenger bag, Castiel walked into a small coffee shop with Anna. The two waited in line, Castiel studying the menu before moving his hands in a flurry of movements to his sister, who regarded them. As they reached the front of the line, Castiel thought the man behind the counter was extremely attractive. Anna looked over at him, raising an eyebrow, before ordering for Castiel, paying, and then leaving.

Castiel took his drink, heading over to the table in the corner with the steaming cup of coffee, pulling out his sketchbook and pencils, and beginning to sketch the world outside the window he had decided to sit by. 

At a shift change, the barista moved to Castiel, nodding at the seat across from him, “May I?”

Castiel looked up from the sketch in progress, nodding. The barista did so.

No words passed. No, not yet. The nameless barista looked out the window, not interfering with was Castiel was doing. No, not yet.

He pulled out a notebook of his own, and a pencil, beginning to write. Castiel tilted his hand as he watched the boy with dark hair and a light, young stubble. Castiel flipped the page in his sketch book, and took up drawing a couple of quick sketches of the fascinating young boy.

Anna came to gather Castiel, who left his book, a large volume of Sir Arthur Coyan Doyle’s works of Sherlock Holmes.

Inais, the fascinating, curious barista who had sat across from Castiel and had written, sat and stared at the book for a long while before moving the book to lost and found.

Luckily, Castiel did it multiple times.

They fell into a routine, not knowing each others names still. After weeks of this routine, Castiel had left his book behind as he went to the restroom, and Inias wrote him out a note containing his number, leaving it in the book, and left before Castiel came back.

Castiel picked up his book, and noticing the new bookmark read it over and turned a deep red. He looked around for the writer, and when he didn’t see him, headed outside and looked around.

Gabriel collected him that day forty-five minutes later.

He also read the note, and Castiel didn’t see it ever again, but what it did get him was a boyfriend.

The two, Inias and Castiel, went out for a rough estaminet of six months, which was shared with the learning of sign language, letters and notes passed, and ice cream cones. 

They went to the park multiple times, nearly every week, as Castiel loved to sit and watch the bees on the flowers, sometimes sit and sketch for hours on end. And Inias fancied watching him draw.

Inias also lived in the highest bedroom of his small house, and one time asked Castiel if he would like to go up on the roof with him. Castiel nodded, and followed Inias up onto the roof, watching the world under them.

More so silent than normal, as Castiel normally had this air about him that was open and that he was present with you, but now he seemed focused on the feeling of the shingles below him, the breeze blowing over him, ruffling his hair more. Inias gently moved his hand to take Castiel’s in his, silence spreading between the two.

It wasn’t bad, actually.


End file.
